Import Export Business

This Import Export Business blog is dedicated to providing you with news, information and resources about the business of international trade. You will find the information useful to both business owners who wish to begin exporting or expand their export markets and new entrepreneurs seeking the basics of how to get started.

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Import Export Business Tips

1. Get a voicemail system to receive your calls.You can have a dedicated phone number that allows you to record an outgoing message and receive unlimited incoming messages for as little as $24 a year ($34 the first year) - that is $2 a month. (NOTE: I did not say $24 a month, I said $24 a year after the first year which has a $10 setup fee.)

The voice messages are then sent to you via email and you can play them back on your computer anywhere you might be in the world. You can find these services advertised on the net, but if you would like the name of the service I have used for 5 years you have to get either the Import Export Toolkit or the Exporters Master Training package.

Sidenote: everyone loves their children and grand-children but you should not put their voice on your outgoing message - if you do not like your voice, write down what you want to say and have a friend or relative with a better voice record the outgoing message for you. And, please, do not have your children or grand-children in the background when you are calling someone - you only get one chance to make an impression.

2. Get a dedicated fax number.Here again you can use the same service as the voicemail and have them send your faxes to you via email as PDF documents that you can then view on your monitor and print out, if necessary.

Sidenote: I often use a dedicated fax number as a means of qualifying an import lead's validity - if an "importer" has the same number listed for both their fax and phone number, they are most likely just getting started, or are sample seekers who have no intention of buying anything. Don't waste your time.

3. STOP USING YAHOO AND HOTMAIL email addresses.I have spoken to many people who will not bother to read an email if it is sent from a Hotmail or Yahoo email account. So when trying to do business via the Internet DO NOT try to do so with a Yahoo or Hotmail email account and expect people on the receiving end to take you seriously.

Gmail.com offers the best FREE email system right now and although it will probably reach a point where it too is looked down upon in the business world, it is still fairly new and does not have the BAD stigma attached to it that Yahoo and Hotmail have achieved.

BETTER YET - Follow advice on our last post about getting a website and begin using your own website Email system to send and receive your emails.

Yahoo and Hotmail email systems are two of the MOST restrictive systems that I and other business owners I have spoken to have found - many, if not most, of any email with the word dollar, or symbol for dollars $ or mere mention of order or other commonly used business terms will send your email into their spam folder. Oh and forget about an email with an attachment like an invoice.

4. STOP SENDING FREE SAMPLES.Do your due diligence on a lead first, make sure they are a legitimate business and even then DO NOT SEND FREE SAMPLES - advise them that you will ship samples at wholesale cost and they will pay shipping "in advance" but that once you receive an order for $1,000 or more, you will deduct the wholesale cost of the samples from their first order. NO NEGOTIATION. Scammers know you want and need business and they will use this against you.

The above method was provided to me from the owner of a very successful vitamin manufacturing business (about $10 million a year successful) and it is the exact method his company uses, no exceptions.

5. FREE TRADE LEADS.Forget about the trade lead boards, legitimate importer don't need them, they have the Internet and will find their sources of supply via the websites of the manufacturers and/or exporters. The majority of the FREE importer (buyer) leads are 1 person wannabee startups but the vast majority are SCAMMERS and FREE SAMPLE SEEKERS that will not only break your bank but waste your most precious asset - TIME!

There is a way you can find REAL importers using your best friend on the Internet - Google. I will not provide the exact details of how to find them as this is reserved for the BONUS resources we give to our customers who purchase either our Import Export training course or just the Export training course.

But I will tell you that GOOGLE can be your BEST friend in identifying REAL importers or REAL products that you seek to export and the key I will reveal is to learn how to use their "ADVANCED" search techniques. Other than that, if you want a full, detailed description of this search strategy you will have to get one of the two above mentioned courses.

Finding REAL IMPORTERS using the method I discovered is great, however, in the world of marketing, which type of lead is better? A lead that you find, then contact and try to sell OR a lead that has already seen that you have the product(s) they are looking for and now they have called you or sent you an email?

COMMON SENSE - the lead that is coming to YOU is the BEST lead you can find in ANY BUSINESS. And what is the best way to help potential customers find you and your products? Yes, you guessed it, a WEBSITE (re-read the post previous to this one).

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

International Trade Leads

The previous post revealed how the oldest and most reliable publishers of international trade leads are or have gone out of business, including the US government's trade leads services.

For those of you who read my newsletter of blogs, you know I don't beat around the bush as we say here in Central Pennsylvania and this post isn't going to be any different.

If you wish to waste your valuable life's time chasing your tail and getting NO WHERE like tens of thousands of other exporter wannabees, then keep going to the FREE trade lead boards.

Although these boards were all started with GOOD intent, the scammers and spammers soon took over. Little wonder why legitimate Importers NO LONGER post their requirements on these boards?

In 22 1/2 years in business, I have spoken with hundreds of REAL exporters and importers and IN "ALL" instances when I rememebered to ask, NOT ONE has found these boards to be profitbable.

Even a USA based car exporter who advertises on our site has told me privately that he pays the several hundred dollar fee to be a "background" checked member and at BEST in nearly 5 years of paying this fee, he has only generated enough business to pay for his annual dues. READ THIS LAST PARAGRAPH AGAIN, SEVERAL TIMES.

This car exporter further stated that he will not bother responding to any of the FREE members of this largest trade board on the Internet, they are mostly inexperienced wannabees, scammers and spammers.

One of the weirdest phenomena in my 22 1/2 years in the import/export business and nearly 12 years of doing so using Internet marketing is how many people are "bent on free."

There are people out there who would rather spend hundreds of hours accumulating information instead of spending a few dollars to get it and once they apply it can have a steady FLOW of POTENTIAL BUYERS/IMPORTERS coming to their website and ASKING, YES, ASKING for more details, prices, etc. about the products they are trying to export.

"What Is YOUR Time Worth?"

I have 368 web pages within our website. These pages are WORKING for me 24/7 365 days a year. ONE WEB PAGE has generated more revenue for three of the manufacturers we represent than ALL of the other pages.

Once that web page was set up, I have not changed it very much in nearly 7 years. It is a very SIMPLE web page, generic in nature (HOLD ON I am about to reveal a personally discovered secret). It is generic in nature but relavent to all three manufacturers who pay us a steady income, one monthly, two every two months.

Here is the main title of the page and the subject matter, go check it out and be sure to come back and read the rest of this post:Vitamin Manufacturers

One "TRADE LEAD" from this generic web page is now purchasing upwards of $12K product from the one company every 2 months, ADD that up on an annual basis and their orders are GROWING. But again, this is just ONE trade lead, there are many more that generate revenue for us from the other companies and this ONE SIMPLE web page generates trade leads on a consistent basis.

So let's get back to YOU and Your Exporting business.

Whether you are an Export Management company that purchases goods from a manufacturer, marks them up and sells them to a foreign buyer or you are an export broker/agent or simply an export finder, having your own website to promote the products you represent is really the BEST method of generating international trade leads and often domestic leads for the manufacturers you contract with.

Believe me, in today's econonomic environment, a manufacturer does not care if the lead is foreign or domestic, a new customer is new business that helps keep them and their employees paid.

AND, again quite frankly, I DO NOT CARE WHAT ANYONE ELSE WISHES TO CALL ME OR WHAT I DO OR HOW I DO IT as long as the manufacturers remember how to spell my business name correctly on the checks!

SO BACK TO THE QUESTION - "What Is YOUR Time Worth?"

Now you can continue to PLAY THE FREE TRADE LEAD boards and waste your most precious depreciating asset in all of life - YOUR TIME or you can get busy getting your website established on the net and show your manufacturers some REAL trade leads.

Unless, of course, you wish to treat this part of your business like you do when using trade lead boards and try to do a site on a free hosting service and gather together ALL the FREE information you can find on the net about building a website and web pages and ultimately decide it is just too damn complicated and have lost that time forever.

Think how long it would take the average person to put all this information together, to figure out the best FREE tools to get, to get help when needed, and to stay up to date with what is happening (and to know what small part of what's new is important).

They end up working for pennies per hour. They could be pouring all that time and energy into building a business and making serious income per hour. Instead, they chase "free" info and tools for pennies per hour.

Even when they find free info and tools, the info is out of step-by-step order and that person would be missing so much software power because "free" just can't do 1/10th of what the complete website building tool that I have found in my 12 years of using Internet Marketing in conjunction with international trade. So again I ask...

"What Is YOUR Time Worth?"

And don't be fooled into thinking that the FREE web "BLOG" building program like WordPress delivers the same results as your own WEBSITE.

First, a "word" about WordPress...

WordPress is synonymous with blogging. It's a free platform for publishing news, articles, musings and other kinds of content. In other words...

WordPress builds BLOGS, not businesses.

If you start your business by...

o Registering a domain

o Finding and purchasing a Web hosting plan

o Sorting through thousands of templates and plugins

o Reading a variety of gurus blogging about blogging...

You're wasting your precious life's TIME on the things that count for little when building an electronic based business.

By the time you realize that you are missing the "everything else" to build a profitable, long-term online business like so many website owners have done with PROVEN RESULTS...

Summary? Many people drift into WordPress because everyone else does and because it's free. Not only is it not free (unless you value your time at pennies per hour), there is also the "opportunity cost" of the failed attempt.

Instead of having your own e-business earning increasing dollars per year, you have a lost year, or more.

The value of that time and lost income is much more than straight dollars and cents. There's...

Time lost with family.

Time lost acquiring new skills.

Time lost to relax.

Time lost with friends.

Time lost to do the things that make you happy.

For only $29.99/month, you save THOUSANDS of hours of precious time.

If you doubt that, head to the site below to find REAL stories written by REAL people. Solid, verifiable PROOF of success! You just wont find proof like this... these are real-world "how I did it" material, everything from a-to-z ("Asphalt" to kaZakhstan"). These stories tell it all.

No short-term "flash in the pan" here. Review their ongoing (unsolicited) updates. Their businesses (and their lives) grow, both now and for the long-term.

About Me

Started Coble International in 1988 with the express purpose of providing Export Import marketing assistance to manufacturers and providing B2B products and services to the global B2B community. Our business expanded exponentially in the late 1990's when we launched our website ImportExportHelp.com. The Internet was and continues to be the best marketing tool for ALL businesses, anywhere in the world. The Import Export business training courses we once offered have been used by community colleges, busineses and individuals around the world and our B2B marketing databases have been used by companies in 70 countries to expand their markets.